Does character matter? In the last century, our society shifted away from teaching character in schools in order to focus on different forms of learning. How has that change shaped the world we live in now? Should cultivating character be a focus of education, and can character even be effectively taught in a pluralistic society?
Our guest on today’s podcast is Dr. William Inboden, provost of the University of Texas, and one of our Senior Fellows here at the Trinity Forum. He’ll be our guide as we explore the roles of education, community, and faith in forming people of wisdom and integrity.
This episode is drawn from an Online Conversation held in 2025. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing its growth.
In this episode, we explore the life and mind of whom historian Tom Holland calls “17th century Europe’s supreme polymath": Blaise Pascal.
Our guide is Graham Tomlin, a former bishop in the Church of England.
Drawing from his book, Blaise Pascal, the Man Who Made the Modern World, Graham brings us on a journey through Pascal’s life, his conversion to Christianity, and his famous argument for belief in God known as “the Wager.”
Together, we’ll explore the ways in which Pascal himself can still be a guide for us today.
This conversation was recorded in August 2025. You can find the original video and transcript here.
Thank you for joining us in exploring timeless wisdom together, to help you gain clarity and courage for your own life, and to help nurture a culture of renewed hope.
What does redemptive leadership mean? As Christians, we have a unique calling: not just to lead, but to serve. What does this look like in today’s culture, and how can we serve as leaders and foster an environment of abundant grace and joy wherever we are?
Christianity Today’s Dr. Nicole Massie Martin helps us to understand how we can nail outdated models of leadership to the cross, and what it will take to replace them with Biblical ones:
This conversation is from an Online Conversation recorded in May 2025. We hope this conversation will inspire you to identify the ways you lead, and how you can step further into leading with grace, humility, and joy.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Go deeper into the issues discussed in this episode with these Trinity Forum Readings:
What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.
But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way:
This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2023. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time.
If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.
As we ponder the spirituality of walking, our fall Trinity Forum Reading features naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s ruminations on the art of walking, with an introduction by Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder. Stay tuned for pre-ordering later this week, and join our membership to receive a copy mailed directly to you.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Related Conversations:
Register for Hutchmoot, the Rabbit Room's annual conference October 9-12 in Franklin, TN.
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcasts/ and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
Our theme for this episode is “Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives,” and our guest is the author and speaker Beth Moore.
Drawing from her bestselling memoir, Beth helps us work through a challenge we all may face at various times: maintaining resilience — and faithfulness to our vocations — in the face of hardship:
“I’d come to a point where I thought, oh my goodness, I see this. I get what Jesus is doing here, whatever it might be. I had this compelling to share it, and I have throughout my whole adult life.”This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2025. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time.
If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.
Go deeper into the topics discussed in this conversation with these Trinity Forum Readings:
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’re focusing on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Today’s episode concludes our summer series. Our guide today is the acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson, author of the Gilead series, and much else.
In this episode, originally an Online Conversation recorded in 2020, Marilynne reflects on the art of writing as a means of exploring truth and engaging questions around learning to live well, to love others, and to create a home and community, in our fractious world:
And if this conversation resonates with you, consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too.
Marilynne Robinson's Novels | Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, Jack, Reading Genesis
Article in Breaking Ground from our event.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Moby Dick, by Herman Mellville
Piers Plowman, by William Langland
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Marilynne Robinson is a novelist, essayist, and teacher, one of the most renowned and revered of living writers. Her novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Lila, and Home have been variously honored with the Pulitzer Prize, National Books Critics Circle Award (twice), a Hemingway Foundation Award, an Orange Prize, The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the Ambassador Book Award. She's also the author of many essays and non-fiction works, including her work, “Mother Country”, and her essay collections, “Death of Adam,” “Absence of Mind,” “When I was a Child I Read Books,” “The Givenness of Things,” and “What Are We Doing Here?”. She's the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to her writing has spent over 20 years teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, as well as several universities.
Guided by theologian and musician David Bailey and concert pianist and chamber musician Mia Chung, this episode explores the concept that music involves mutual support, balance, and give and take among musicians to create a cohesive experience.
And we reflect on how Christian communities can apply these principles of collaboration and harmony to create faith communities that are transformative:
To the extent that the arts can actually cultivate that practice of incorporating the right hemisphere and in communication with the left, it's always together, you know, they're, complimentary. I think we can benefit each other in terms of community formation, but even benefit our own intellectual lives and the amount of joy we experience living in this world. - Mia ChungIf this work resonates with you, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a society member.
This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in June, 2024. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.
Learn more about Mia Chung and David Bailey.
Episode Outline
00:00 Introduction to Trinity Forum Conversations
00:34 Exploring Music and Christian Community
01:36 Cherie Harder on Cultural Challenges
02:55 Welcoming David Bailey and Mia Chung
04:41 David Bailey's Musical Journey
06:56 Mia Chung's Musical Formation
10:44 The Role of Arts in Reconciliation
13:19 The Power of Music in Community Building
23:17 Reintegration and Reconciliation at MIT
28:52 Challenges and Practices for Reconciliation
30:10 Digital Discipleship and Secular Influence
30:44 The Importance of Fasting and Listening
32:33 Engaging Differently as Followers of Jesus
33:28 The Role of Technology in Information Consumption
34:18 Post-COVID Convening and Empathetic Listening
37:25 The Power of Music and Emotional Expression
40:04 Silence and Contemplative Practices
44:43 Artistic Collaboration and Reconciliation
51:19 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Arrabon: Learning Reconciliation Through Community & Worship Music, by David Bailey
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Hannah and Nathan, by Wendell Berry
Painting as a Pastime, by Winston Churchill
The Four Quartets, by TS Eliot
Letters from Vincent Van Gogh
Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Why Work?, by Dorothy Sayers
The Loss of the University, featuring the works of Wendell Berry and Jacques Maritain
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Our guest this episode is the poet Christian Wiman, a master of the written – and spoken – word. After long wandering, he returned to the Christian faith in which he’d been raised, in part because of a terminal cancer diagnosis – one he has now long outlived. Both before and after his diagnosis, and his return to faith, his experience of despair has fueled his powerful poetry. In grappling with it, Christian uses words in ways that are a tonic against despair.
This podcast is drawn from an online conversation from 2024. We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.
If it does, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast on your chosen platform.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, by Christian Wiman
Marilynne Robinson
Danielle Chapman
William Bronk
William Wordsworth
Every Riven Thing, by Christian Wiman
My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman
Prayer, by Carol Ann Duffy
The Bible and Poetry, by Michael Edwards
Augustine of Hippo
Bittersweet, by George Herbert
Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis
Richard Wilbur
Jürgen Moltmann
When the Time’s Toxins, by Christian Wiman
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Devotions by John Donne, paraphrased by Philip Yancey
God’s Grandeur: the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil
Related Conversations:
Connecting Spiritual Formation & Public Life with Michael Wear
The Kingdom, the Power & The Glory with Tim Alberta
A Life Worth Living with Miroslav Volf
Towards a Better Christian Politics
Christian Pluralism: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference
What Really Matters with Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth
Scripture and the Public Square
How to be a Patriotic Christian
Life, Death, Poetry & Peace with Philip Yancey
The Fall, the Founding, and the Future of American Democracy
Fear and Conspiracy with David French
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
In this Trinity Forum Conversation, author Lanta Davis, along with special guest host and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Jessica Hooten Wilson, delve into the power of imagination and its role in our spiritual formation. The discussion centers on Davis's book Becoming by Beholding, which explores Christian imagination through art, literature, and historical practices.
These friends and scholars discuss the transformative potential of engaging with sacred art, the virtues, and traditional practices like Lectio Divina:
"In Jesus's parables ... He's constantly showing us that there's more hidden behind the surface than we think. The mustard seed is not just a mustard seed. Yeast is not just yeast ... Jesus shows us heavenly meanings ... This is what the incarnation helps us understand, that the divine is not just up above. It's all around us. It's here and now. That when God became matter, all the material world changed because of it."We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.
This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in March 2025. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.
Learn more about Lanta Davis and Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Episode Outline
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
04:47 Exploring the Power of Imagination
05:37 The Concept of Becoming by Beholding
07:46 Living in an Enchanted World
10:53 Tradition and the Logic of Eternity
13:49 Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Orthopathy
17:22 The Role of Icons and Medieval Bestiaries
23:25 Lectio Divina and Imaginative Prayer
27:20 Virtues and Vices: A Deeper Look
30:38 Understanding Virtue and Its Historical Context
31:37 The Practicality of Virtue Personifications
32:32 Teaching Virtues in Everyday Life
33:50 Exploring Courage Through Art
36:30 Incorporating Virtue in Contemporary Art
38:15 Imagination and Its Role in Understanding Reality
45:28 Scripture, Culture, and the Fruits of the Spirit
49:49 Global Christian Art and Imagination
51:34 Resources for Teaching and Engaging with Art
54:46 Travel and Exploration of Christian Art
56:33 Desire, Trust, and Identity in Modern Culture
59:39 The Last Word with Lanta Davis
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Becoming by Beholding, by Lanta Davis
Jessica Hooten Wilson
Ralph C. Wood
In the Beauty of Holiness, by David Lyle Jeffrey
Luke Ferriter
“Hurrahing in Harvest”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot
Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton
Flannery O’Connor
Grace Hammond
On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books, by Karen Swallow Prior
Alan Noble
A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor
Dorothy Sayers
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
James K.A. Smith
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
John Donne
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
Spirit and Imagination: Reflections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
In this episode, our guides are modern hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty. Back in 2019, we hosted a live Evening Conversation in which they explored the ways in which music can speak to our spiritual hunger and shape our sense of beauty, truth, and purpose:
We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.
If it does, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast on your chosen platform.
Learn more about the Gettys.
Watch our Evening Conversation.
Authors, artists, and books mentioned in the conversation:
Peter Kreeft
The Republic, by Plato
Damon of Athens
Sing: How Worship Transforms your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristyn Getty
Unwearied Praises: Exploring Christian Faith Through Classic Hymns, by Dr. Jeff Greenman
The Pedagogy of Praise, by Dr. Jeff Greenman
John Lennox
Lucy Shaw
Eugene Peters
J.I. Packer
Martin Luther
Leonard Bernstein
Amy Carmichael
Cecil Frances Alexander
Os Guinness
Charles Spurgeon
Lloyd Jones
D.L. Moody
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Related Conversations:
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
In this episode, our focus is Jane Austen, and our guide is Karen Swallow Prior, one of our Trinity Forum Senior Fellows.
Karen explores the faith-informed perspective on virtue that Austen’s novels reflect:
Jane Austen’s world and concerns seem distant from ours. Yet across the centuries, she illuminates the importance of the seemingly mundane, and the path towards repaired and rightly ordered relationships.
If this work resonates with you, consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2021. You can find the full video of this conversation here. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman
Praying with Jane, by Rachel Dodge
Alasdair MacIntyre
William Shakespeare
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Today’s guide is the author and professor Diana Glyer. She’ll be talking about the lives and work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their beloved community known as the Inklings.
In this episode drawn from an online conversation held in February of 2021, Diana focuses on how creativity thrives within small clusters of like-hearted people. We hope you enjoy reflecting on the potential of your own friendships and communities to be culture-shaping.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, by Diana Glyer
Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings, by Diana Glyer
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Charles Williams
Shakespeare
Hugo Dyson
Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
On Friendship, by Cicero
The Golden Key, by George MacDonald
The Oracle of the Dog, by G.K. Chesterton
The Lost Tools of Learning, by Dorothy Sayers
Related Conversations:
Suffering, Friendship, and Courage: What Lewis & Tolkien Teach Us About Resilience & Imagination, an Online Conversation with Joe Loconte
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where art, creation, and Creator meet to bring restoration and life into a world fatigued by division, brokenness, and hurt. From Jazz to Jane Austen and between, this season we’ll be focusing on the ways the arts answer the questions of what can enrich, refresh, and challenge our inner lives—and hand us the keys to the Good Life from within the heart.
How should we live faithfully within a world created to be good and beautiful, and yet everywhere is marred by ugliness and injustice?
Jazz vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd joins our podcast to discuss the intersection of music, creativity, and justice, and to help us think deeply about our role in repairing, re-envisioning, and creating new places of beauty, justice, and flourishing:
We know that art shapes and reshapes us and that it’s there in the cross of Jesus, I believe, where beauty and violence collided and beauty won. And so that act of loving someone…purposely trying to love someone, especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable, is…directly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making.We hope you enjoy and are encouraged by Floyd’s artistic journey, how she finds beauty in the midst of suffering, and her vision for the role of love in creativity.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Ruth Naomi Floyd.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Frederick Douglass Jazz Works
It Was Good, Making Music to the Glory of God, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
The Problem of Good, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
Dr. John Nunez
Toni Morrison
Martin Luther King Jr.
Vincent van Gogh
Hans Christian Andersen
Miles Davis
Francis Schaeffer
Joshua Stamper
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Letters from Vincent van Gogh
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Revelation, by Flannery O’Connor
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
In this episode we’re joined by theologian and bestselling author Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School. His latest book is The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others is Making Us Worse.
The question he explores is one that relates to all of us: how can we find a way to strive for excellence, rather than for superiority over those around us?
Finding new insights in familiar Biblical passages and the Christian tradition, he’ll help us to defy our culture of merciless ambition:
Let’s dare trust in the God who comes down to serve those who are a refuse of society. And let’s trust in that unconditional love of God that takes those of us who are nothing and places us to become sharers of the community of those who are God’s beloved children.
This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2025. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people working to keep the Christian intellectual tradition alive, and to nurture new growth in it in our time, for the renewal of our culture.
If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member at ttf.org. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
This conversation is on the practical wisdom the Christian tradition offers for something that affects all of us: matters of life and death. Dr. Lydia Dugdale will be our guide.
Lydia has applied practices from this faith tradition in her daily work with patients and families as a physician, professor and medical ethicist in New York City. She draws deeply from it in her book The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom – which she wrote for her patients, and those who love them:
We hope this conversation helps paint a picture of what it means to live as a Christian on the road of life, where death is not the end, but a stop along the way to eternity.
This podcast was recorded with a live audience at a Trinity Forum evening conversation in Nashville in 2025. It’ll give you a good sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people working to keep the Christian intellectual tradition alive, to nurture new growth in it for society’s renewal, and to make it available to all.
Related Conversations:
Being, Living, and Dying Well, an Online Conversation with Lydia Dugdale
Faith, Health, and Healing, an Evening Conversation with Farr Curlin and Daniel Sulmasy
In this conversation, author Ross Douthat draws from the tradition to tackle a foundational question: Why believe?
Amid evidence that America’s long trend of secularization has leveled off, a perception of the limits of a strictly materialist worldview, and growing dissatisfaction with “do it yourself” approaches to spirituality, what does traditional faith uniquely offer those seeking truth in our time?
New York Times columnist and author Ross Douthat joins us for this conversation, making the case for Christianity and rejecting atheism, all through the lens of reason:
We hope this conversation provides a look at faith from a fresh angle, and encourages you in practicing traditional faith as an answer to the search for truth in our time.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in February 2025. Watch the recording here.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Ross Douthat for The New York Times
The Deep Places: A memoir of Illness and Discovery
The Decadent Society to Change the Church
To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism
Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious
Bethel McGrew, on left vs. right brain of Christianity
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
The Wager; Blaise Pascal
The Strangest Story in the World; G.K. Chesterton
A Practical View of Real Christianity; William Wilberforce
God’s Grandeur: Gerard Manley Hopkins selection of poems; Gerard Manley Hopkins
Related Conversations:
A World Transformed with Tom Holland
The Strangest Story in the World: G.K. Chesterton and the Incarnation with Dale Ahlquist
Truth and Trust with Francis Collins
Faith in an Empirical World with Ard Louis and Tremper Longman
We were made for relationship — to be seen, loved, known, and committed to others. And yet we increasingly find ourselves, in the words of sociologist Jonathan Haidt, “disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
On our podcast Haidt and bestselling author Andy Crouch pair up to explore how the technology era has seduced us with a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back, and restore true community:
“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” - Andy CrouchWe hope you enjoy this conversation about the seismic effects technology has had on our personal relationships, civic institutions, and even democratic foundations — and how we might approach rethinking our technologies and reclaiming human connection.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt
The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt
Culture Making, by Andy Crouch
Playing God, by Andy Crouch
Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch
The TechWise Family, by Andy Crouch
My TechWise Life, by Amy and Andy Crouch
The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, by Andy Crouch
Ernest Hemingway
Francis Bacon
Howard Hotson
Greg Lukianoff
Wolfram Schultz
The Sacred Canopy, by Peter L. Berger
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley
Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt
City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help...
US foreign aid is unexpectedly in the news in 2025 as never before. What do Christians need to know, to help us be part of the dialogue?
America's history of foreign aid dates back at least to the Marshall Plan that followed World War II. Many Christians have been involved. How have these believers thought about the appropriate roles of government and of faith-based institutions? What has the US been doing, with what impact? And what is the situation on the ground now?
Three believers knowledgeable about this work join us for this episode to illustrate the scope of how faith-based foreign aid has impacted regions worldwide, share their perspectives on what a Christ-like spirit looks like in this field, and discuss where they see aid is most needed—now more than ever.
"Jesus calls on us to help the poor, your neighbor, the stranger, the sick, the shunned, the scorned, the stigmatized. Think of Jesus embracing those in poverty, prostitution, leprosy ... the US ... is not a savior. That’s Jesus’s job. But it can be an enabler of human flourishing so that people can survive and thrive." — Mark LagonThis podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation from April 2025. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Related Conversations:
Abraham Kuyper’s Sphere Sovereignty with Vincent Bacote
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
As we emerge from the Lenten season, freshly renewed by the triumph of the Resurrection, beauty and wonder are particularly present for Christians. In this episode, author and songwriter Andrew Peterson shares his insights about the importance of location and living responsibly and attentively in whatever specific place you inhabit. He discusses how deeper attentiveness to the beauty around us can awaken us to wisdom and wonder.
This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation from December 2021. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.
Learn more about Andrew Peterson.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The God of the Garden, by Andrew Peterson
Tim Mackey, The Bible Project’s Tree of Life podcast series
Jaber Crow, by Wendell Berry
William Wordsworth
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, by James Howard Kunstler
Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, Eric O. Jacobsen
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Rich Mullins
10 Resolutions for Mental Health, Clyde Kilby
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Bright Evening Star, Madeleine L’Engle
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
Babette’s Feast, by Isak Dinesen
Related Conversations:
Practicing Gratitude with Diana Butler Bass
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Throughout Lent, we've been releasing weekly episodes focused on spiritual practices.
In the final episode of the series, this Holy Week we're considering the discipline of waiting: how we can prepare ourselves to receive good news.
Our guide today is N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar. He describes how Jesus invited his hearers into a new way of understanding Israel’s ancient story of waiting, the cosmic significance of its sudden fulfillment, and its meaning for us in this in-between time of preparation to receive good news:
"The ultimate life after death is not a platonic disembodied immortality, but resurrection life in God‘s new creation. And that new world began when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning. That’s the good news. Something happened then as a result of which the world is a different place. And we are summoned, not just to enjoy its benefits, but to take up our own vocations as new creation people, as spirit-filled and spirit-led Jesus followers, bringing his kingdom into reality in our world."
We hope that this conversation will help you as you wait and prepare to receive this good news.
The podcast is drawn from an evening conversation we hosted back in 2016. You can find our shownotes and much more at ttf.org.
Thank you for journeying with us through Lent.
Learn more about N.T. Wright.
Watch The Good News and the Good Life, with N.T. Wright and Richard Hayes.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Who is this Man? by John Ortberg
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Devotions by John Donne and paraphrased by Philip Yancey
The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine of Hippo, Introduced by James K.A. Smith
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
God’s Grandeur: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Spiritual Pilgrimage by Malcolm Muggeridge
Related Conversations:
Liturgy of the Ordinary in Extraordinary Times with Tish Harrison Warren
Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies with Marilyn McEntyre
Invitation to Solitude and Silence with Ruth Haley Barton
On the Road with Saint Augustine with James K.A. Smith and Elizabeth Bruenig
The Habit Podcast, Episode 26: Tish Harrison Warren with Doug McKelvey
The Spiritual Practice of Remembering with Margaret Bendroth
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